Is the complement a part of predicate? For example, in the sentence: "He was the strangest person she had ever met" - "he" is the subject, "was" is the link word and "the stangest person she had ever met" is the complement. But at the same time, everything in a sentence apart from the subject, apart from the complete subject to be exact, is considered a predicate. On the basis of this can we say that complement is a part of predicate?
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Yes, you are right.– rogermueCommented Mar 11, 2015 at 19:08
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2 Answers
A predicate, defined, is the part of the sentence that modifies the subject. For example:
He ran quickly. (ran quickly is the predicate)
Ben read the book (read the book modifies the subject, and is hence, the predicate)
Having defined a predicate, let's analyse your sentence.
"the strangest person" describes the subject, "he". Thus, it is the predicate.
What about "she had ever met"? "She had ever met" is a dependent clause, that is modifying "strangest person". As it is not directly modifying the subject, but modifying something that modifies the subject, it's called the "secondary predicate":
A secondary predicate is a (mostly adjectival) predicative expression that conveys information about the subject but is not the main predicate of the clause. This structure may be analysed in many different ways.
These may be resultative, as in (1) and (2) or descriptive as in (3).
(1) She painted the town red
(2) The film left me cold
As "the strangest person she had ever met" was the complement, as well as the predicate, the complement in this case is part of the predicate.
answered Aug 26, 2011 at 6:57
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You wrote in the sentence "He ran quickly" that quickly is the predicate. But what about "ran"? As far as I know, in a sentence everything apart from the subject is the predicate (i.e. complete predicate). On the basis of this we can say, that the predicate here is "ran quickly".– Anges491Commented Aug 26, 2011 at 7:59
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Also you mentioned that only in that sentece the complement was part of the predicate. What about other sentences? Isn't the complement part of the predicate in all other sentences?– Anges491Commented Aug 26, 2011 at 8:00
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@Anges, "ran quickly" is the predicate, thanks for pointing that out. However, about your second comment, I don't seem to get you. What other sentences? Please clarify. Commented Aug 26, 2011 at 8:05
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Thanks for the reply Thursagen. What I mean is that I think the complement is always part of the predicate in all English sentences. Am I right?– Anges491Commented Aug 26, 2011 at 10:49
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Assuming complement means an argument of the verb other than the subject, and if you analyze sentences into subject and predicate, then a complement must be part of the predicate. There's nowhere else for it to be.
For instance, if you split a sentence like "John loves Mary" into two parts, subject "John" and predicate "loves Mary", as is customary in traditional grammar, the complement to the verb, "Mary", has to be part of the predicate.
In your example, "He was the strangest person she had ever met", since "he" is the subject, the predicate must be "was the strangest person she had ever met". (I'm don't know how the term "link word" is used). That makes the complement to "was", "the strangest person she had ever met", a part of the predicate.
In predicate logic, the term "predicate" is used differently. You could still call "loves Mary" in the above example a predicate, but predicates can have several arguments, so "loves" counts as a predicate with two arguments, the subject "John" and the complement object "Mary". Using terms this way, a complement is not part of the predicate.
For your example, the "was" probably would not be treated as a predicate by a logician. There is a variety of predicate logic with a special identity operation, and maybe that could be used to represent "was", though the past tense would be a problem. I'm not sure that your example even has a predicate in the sense in which that term is used in predicate logic.
